How Chinese Tourists Are Spending Abroad

Every year, more Chinese tourists are travelling abroad as their economy grows and their amount of disposable income rises. Here's how they are spending that money.

How many Chinese tourists are there?

Last year, 122 million Chinese nationals travelled overseas, up 4.3% on the previous year. Although Chinese tourists used to buy mainly luxury goods whilst travelling, standard retail purchases are rising. On their most recent trip, the majority of Chinese tourists spend $393-786 USD on retail purchases, but 5.7% of them spent over $6288 USD. The average spend per person as $900 USD, and the total amounted to $109.8 billion USD.

How do Chinese tourists prefer to pay?

Because they are accustomed to paying with WeChat and Alipay at home, Chinese citizens expect the same level of convenience on their travels. 67% of tourists surveyed said they used WeChat Pay or Alipay to pay when they were abroad, which amounts to about 41% of consumption.
A growing number of merchants outside china are beginning to accept these popular ewallets due to high customer demand. 70% of merchants have cited that customers from mainland china were their greatest global source of revenue.

The most popular things to pay for by mobile were:

Clothing

Makeup & Skincare

Food & beverage

Travel tickets and hotel stays also ranked highly.
How is this payments landscape expected to evolve?
The number of overseas merchants accepting mobile payments and ewallets like Alipay and WeChat Pay is likely to rise. The average transaction value is also expected to increase, which merchants must adapt to.